Hello, Jivers. We would loooove to see a "sticky" feature built into Clearspace that would enable a Space admin to promote a particular piece of content (a thread, document, etc) so that it would appear on the top, below Announcements but above the other posts.

If this "sticky" thread could somehow be marked with a different color or icon, it would be a very robust feature that would enable us folks to drive users toward particular pieces of content on Clearspace.

Our users are extremely interested in this feature as well. One of them has suggested a variation on this concept to also allow "sticky" content within a Tag Group, but keeping it seperate from the "sticky" content on the Recent Content to avoid too many "sticky" items appearing at the top of Recent Content.

when you go into a "Tag Group", it would be nice to able to have a document at the top of the list (which seems to be what you guys are covering with the "Sticky" idea).

However, I am just thinking, since this is essentially a Virtual folder where filtering is being applied to display the documents you want, has it been considered to allow the user to make a document "sticky" only within a specific "Tag Group" so it will show at the top of that tag group but not necessarily always remain at the top of the list of "All documents"?

My reasoning is this; suppose you have 10 tag groups and in each of them you have 2 "sticky" documents. That is great and very useful on a per tag group level, but what happens when you just remove the filtering by going to the "All Documents" tab? Will all 20 (10 groups * 2 stickies each) documents be displayed at the top? While this example is a small one, that list could grow over time and become quite large (making the stickies less effective as now the user is again just looking at a large list of documents and the relevance of each sticky is diminished)

Some minor changes to the main page FTL and/or the creation of a Widget to expose that information,

plus a simple action/plugin component definition to drop the link throughout the site...

And you are pretty much there.....

Minus the fact that anyone can add a tag to a piece of content...is there a reason that a "Watch-A-Tag" Widget wouldn't meet the lion's share of the functionality (renamed title of course), looking for a tag, such as "featured".

I am familiar with the Discussion Forums feature you are referring to, but just wondering with all the Widgets and the Personalized Dashboards, if this functionality isn't already there somehow.

It's a good basis, rrutan, but the "Minus the fact that anyone can add a tag to a piece of content" is a pretty big minus - the idea is that only the admin would have the permission to promote a piece of content, but with the suggested solution, once users figure out how the "sticky" feature works, they would all be able to promote it. This is a feature that should be built in and permissions for which should belong to the Space Admin.

yeah, thats how I envision it. A way for the space admins to make certain posts sticky. No way to manipulate it or anything just a simple "lock to top" option. Maybe even an extra screen in the admin console with some up-down arrows where you can move the posts up and down in their order. In my opinion, it would be nice to have the extra ability to adjust the hierarchy of the stuck posts. Lets Go Sticky Threads!

A way for the space admins to make certain posts sticky. No way to manipulate it or anything just a simple "lock to top" option. Maybe even an extra screen in the admin console with some up-down arrows where you can move the posts up and down in their order. In my opinion, it would be nice to have the extra ability to adjust the hierarchy of the stuck posts. Lets Go Sticky Threads!

That's exactly how I'd like to be able to use it. It's looking like this is a pretty important piece of functionality for a lot of people. To clarify regarding Announcements - as far as I'm concerned annuncements should be things I've published that I want people to read, a sticky thread is something I want people to contribute to - and it may not necessarily be something that we as a business have posted ourselves.

Yep, right there with you about the lack of response. Also, this topic is one of the most popular on the feature requests page, so I'm not sure how someone from Jive just isn't seeing it.... Unfortunately this may be another one of those things where it was decided for us that we don't need it.

All I want is a documented product enhancement request. Even if the feature is never implemented (which it should) atleast we can all know that we did what we could to get the ball rolling. Maybe down the line some programmer will get sick of seeing this feature request on the roadmap and just implement it.... fingers crossed...

Yep, right there with you about the lack of response. Also, this topic is one of the most popular on the feature requests page, so I'm not sure how someone from Jive just isn't seeing it.... Unfortunately this may be another one of those things where it was decided for us that we don't need it.

All I want is a documented product enhancement request. Even if the feature is never implemented (which it should) atleast we can all know that we did what we could to get the ball rolling. Maybe down the line some programmer will get sick of seeing this feature request on the roadmap and just implement it.... fingers crossed...

I was starting to think it's just any feature request / enhancement I mention - I've not had a single response to any of them.

I agree with the general sentiment that Jive has yet to provide an official answer; however, this may be due to the fact that this feature (in my opinion) is possibly a better plugin than a platform enhancement. All the tools are there to build this feature in the plugin framework....and when I look at "Sticky Threads" from a Social Business Software perspective, the way that Jive has implemented it, it is a Widget on a Customizable Dashboard for a container. That is the only real place in the system that exists for the System Owners to promote define content for the end-users, minus maybe an argument for tag groups.

In my view of the problem, I can see the problem being solved (in the 80-90% use-case) via the following (to restate from above):

1 Custom Action in the "Actions" Menu- Renders for Space Admins of a Container (or Group Admins) when viewing a given thread

This action would receive the ThreadID and store it to a predefined Container Property.

1 Custom Widget - For Placement on Project, Group, and Community dashboard pages

This would be the UI to the feature. It would read from its current container the predefined property, allowing you to arrange/re-order the items (reorder the list of IDs in the property)

You could definitely go more commando with this functionality, but this is a simple elegant solution I feel solves the core problem. If people are really wanting ths feature, I'll put forth the effort this/next week to crack out a 1.0 plugin and post it to this thread. I am no UI guy by any means....so the widget will strictly be outputting the standard Thread display that Jive has provided.

In return, I'd appreciate everyone's feeedback/consideration for a feature that I have been trying to push for a while with them as well. The feature morphed mid-discussion, so please read the entire thread and let them know your thoughts.

P.S. Jive, in the event you were letting this thread self-monitor, please provide some official response to this feature so we all understand where this fits in the new SBS platform vision. Many thanks.

Wouldn't it be easier/better to add an attribute (i.e. value 1 - 10) to a doc or thread that community admins/moderators can set so that if the content is part of a/any result set (search, widget, tag, etc) show on top in the specified order?

The way I workaround now is to give content a certain tag and use widgets or links to a tag cloud.

It may be better served as a custom widget, and that's totally cool if that is the proper route. I'm personally more concerned about the end result rather than all the steps it takes to get there. If the same goal can be accomplished via a custom widget that could be accomplished by built-in functionality then awesome. This turns more into a support issue at that point.

With that being said, a sticky feature may not be in the overall picture for SBS according to Jive, but as you can tell just from the response to this post alone, this feature is something that Jive's customers are expecting from their software or would like to see implemented. As noted above, sticky posts are pretty much SOP for all forums, message boards, etc. (even the free ones). From the customer perspective, this raises the question "Why not in Clearspace/SBS?"

I agree with you 100% on the fact that some sort of offical response is in order. It would be great for someone to provide a definitive answer on this request just to let everyone know what to expect.

I'm not doubting your solution (although I can't make head nor tail of it) but it seems like a lot of work to hack the system to do something that pretty much every other forum I've ever used does as standard.

This seems to be symptomatic of an issue I just don't understand. Clearpsace is promoted as something that can be run as a customer facing comunity platform and yet there seems to be no desire to provide things like the basic discussion functionality, usability and management that you would expect from a public facing platform. All the effort seems to be directed towards expanding the internal business collaboration elements of the product which can have vastly different usability and structural requriements, whilst simple elements that are staples of online discussion forums (sticky threads, merged threads, move notifications, view last unread post, thread display properties) are left unconsidered.

Clearspace is a great product in many ways but the more I use it the more frustrated I get with it's inability to properly service my business needs - and it's not as if my business needs are off the wall, it's just basic stuff that could probably be solved by a simple display config option or admin function. If the roadmap for the product is to concentrate on being an internal collaboration tool with all that entails then that should be stated up front because if the commercial / public facing types of functionality are going to be ignored then it's potentially not the product for many people.

Instant Classic has summed up my feelings exactly. I am new to the software -- we have not even launched yet -- and not a programmer. I certainly expected more familiar public-facing features. Trying to invent workarounds for basic functions saps my time and energy and hacking the software is beyond my skill level. And if I have to educate every visitor on how my forums work (vs. every forum they have ever visited) I've already lost.

I hate to say it, because I do like a lot of what I see in Jive, but I sometimes look longingly at Lithium...

So there are elements in your post that I totally agree with, and perhaps I just have a different vantage point. I'd like to go through your comments and give me thoughts on each one...this is in no way trying to one-up you, or attempt to deflate any of your arguments, but merely provide my vantage as to what is going on. I've responded below in bolded-green text.

dougal wrote:

I'm not doubting your solution (although I can't make head nor tail of it) but it seems like a lot of work to hack the system to do something that pretty much every other forum I've ever used does as standard.

- I'm indifferent of whether or not people use/like my solution, the gist of what I'm trying to convey is that to meet the 80-90% use-case....it is less than 8hrs of work for an experienced Jive Plugin Developer, easily less than 30 for a newbie programmer (with some guidance on design). In the time we have spent discussing this feature, we'd practically be on a 2.0 release of the plugin.

- As for "hacking" the system, I would have to disagree. The reason the plugin framework exists is so that people can build-n-bolt on functionality as-needed. I agree that "Sticky Threads" are a standard feature in discussion forum solutions, but this is not just a forum solution. There is a growing market with lots of competitors, and if you look at the people leading in this space, I guarantee you (having done numerous evaluations in this space), that the existance of "Sticky Threads" is not a deal breaker. Building out the foundational elements, such as Content Type Framework, Social Bookmarking (multiple feature-requests dating back to 2007), and general platform architecture are what sell the deals, get them more customers, gets them more revenue, and thus more developers to build more features.

This seems to be symptomatic of an issue I just don't understand. Clearpsace is promoted as something that can be run as a customer facing comunity platform and yet there seems to be no desire to provide things like the basic discussion functionality, usability and management that you would expect from a public facing platform.

- We use it very successfully for part of our external community. Our end-users love it, and it is becoming g We have a fragmented experiece due to legacy (pre-Jive) decisions; however, we are seeing rapid adoption and positive feedback on the platform.

- I would argue that the discussion experience is still quite a strong offering from Jive Forums. From the management side, I definitely feel/hear you. I dont know if this was intentional, and/or was just put on the backburner...but it does beg the question...of where does rounding out the Forums solution fall on Jive's Roadmap? If SBS is to replace the traditional "discussion forum" community, then it either has to at least do 1 of the following: Provide the same features and functionality expected of discussion forums today and/or provide new paradigm alternatives to perform the same functionality.

All the effort seems to be directed towards expanding the internal business collaboration elements of the product which can have vastly different usability and structural requriements, whilst simple elements that are staples of online discussion forums (sticky threads, merged threads, move notifications, view last unread post, thread display properties) are left unconsidered.

- I would definitely say that this most recent release was focused on the Internal side of the house. Looking at the market reports, this is where the growth/opportunity is during these economic downturns...in increasing internal effeciencies. For a company to not attack that at this point in time would be grossly neglegent. However, from their focus, I would say that the external community has benefited as well with some awesome plaform additions and enhanced UI/customization options. This, while a side-benefit, is still a benefit.

- Of the features you mentioned, I've only seen a feature request for I think 2 (not saying the others dont exist), but beating the bushes and gathering support like you have done on this thread is what is needed. In working with Jive for the past 1.5 years, my company has been part of many feature development iniatives, the most prominent being the "personalized" dashboard, and Jive has delivered in spades. Not to say that they ALWAYS do, Feature Idea: Independent Tagging vs. Combined Edit + Tagging Feature , took forever and a day, but after looking into it...it was a relatively easy solution to implement as a plugin. Jive provided insight, both on and offline, to help guide my efforts, and in the end, Jive and its platform enabled me to meet my customers demand. A far cry better than most platforms/companies that leave you stranded with no options.

Clearspace is a great product in many ways but the more I use it the more frustrated I get with it's inability to properly service my business needs - and it's not as if my business needs are off the wall, it's just basic stuff that could probably be solved by a simple display config option or admin function.

- Totally valid argument, and this is where I would say having people in the community to help you (like myself), as well as Jive, is a key part to building out these usable plugins, that may get sucked into the product at large. Since they only release twice a year, there is something that has to suffice the duldrums in-between, and that is the developer community and the plugin framework. The more plugins we have, the more functionality we all get. If you look at the Plugin offering for Confluence (for example), that is just darn impressive, and that is what all us plugin developers want for Jive, as well.

If the roadmap for the product is to concentrate on being an internal collaboration tool with all that entails then that should be stated up front because if the commercial / public facing types of functionality are going to be ignored then it's potentially not the product for many people.

- It might be good to talk with your Sales guy and have them discuss the Roadmap with you. In 2.5, they totally focused on external communities with the Social Groups feature. In 3.0 it was highly internal focused. Perhaps 3.5 this summer is going to be external again, but no one knows unless we ask. This is probably a conversation that will need to take place over the phone or what not due to confidentiality concerns, but still one that I would recommend you having.

Sorry to winge but I'm getting increasingly frustrated.

- I understand, and I hope that I have given you some insight, and not increased in your frustration. I think I'll go ahead and build out the plugin and let you see what you think of the functionality. If it works for you...it's a win for you...and the developer community, if it doesn't, then it was a valiant effort. =) I will poke some friends of mine at Jive to see if we cant get an official response from them today. Hope this helps =)

I agree that Jive allowing people to make their own custom plugins is a huge benefit. This is a great solution for the "one-off" type of widgets that have a very specific purpose for a very specific customer. I don't see the custom plugin route as the best option for functionality that would benefit a large customer base. This is where built-in functionality or a Jive provided solution should take over.

This grassroots, slightly open source feel is great, and it empowers a certain group of people that love to code and love to fidget, and also have the time available to do so, the ability to dig in a make something really cool. However, Clearspace isn't open source, it is a purchased piece of software that provides many different types of online collaboration. With this, and the fact that Clearspace provides forums, discussions, etc. certain functionality is expected. Customers expect "basic forum functionality" from a forum, especially a forum that costs money.

Also, I think that Jive switching between a interally-focused releases and externally-focused releases is what they need to do. That way the evolve their product as a whole, rather than flesh out just one side. I 100% agree with you on your point:

If SBS is to replace the traditional "discussion forum" community, then it either has to at least do 1 of the following: Provide the same features and functionality expected of discussion forums today and/or provide new paradigm alternatives to perform the same functionality.

This grassroots, slightly open source feel is great, and it empowers a certain group of people that love to code and love to fidget, and also have the time available to do so, the ability to dig in a make something really cool. However, Clearspace isn't open source, it is a purchased piece of software that provides many different types of online collaboration. With this, and the fact that Clearspace provides forums, discussions, etc. certain functionality is expected. Customers expect "basic forum functionality" from a forum, especially a forum that costs money.

Exactly. I guess I'm bemused as to why these sort of features aren't inlcuded as they generally ubiquitous on forums - which means that a conscious decision must have been taken not to include them. What I can't work out is the thinking behind that.

I take your points but agree with mccrrory - it is really cool that you're looking at a potential solution and that the whole plug in vision exists, but what ever way you cut it it means having to do development work on your site to get stuff that seems to me like basic functionality. And as mccrrory says, not everyone has the skills or resource available to spend time building plug ins (or even installing and configuring them).

Hello everyone! Allow me to break the deafening silence on behalf of Jive and apologize for missing this thread. Not sure how it happened, but we'll get it fixed and be sure our PM team is actively monitoring all of the conversations on JiveSpace as well as ClearStep. Your ideas are an amazing source of innovation for Jive, and there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one is listening.

So, now on to addressing sticky threads. It is true that this feature was frequently requested when Jive sold the Forums product and it has now become a reasonably standard piece of functionality by vendors of forums products. Reading through your coments it is clear that you see value in having this functionality in our Foundation products as well, and you have some really great ideas about how to implement it. The only thing that might hold this feature up in my mind is that Jive has a much larger initiaitive brewing around how important, relevant content is brought to your attention. Sticky Threads makes a lot of sense in a forums environment, but may end up being too simplistic in a larger social context when so many different forms of communication are screaming for your attention at varying levels of importance and urgency. With that said, if there is any way we can get this feature in without disrupting the larger roadmap we will absolutely do it.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us, and will commit to getting back to you more formally after I've had a chance to chat with our PM & Engineering team.

I'll speak on behalf of everyone following this thread and say thank you for for providing some insight from Jive's perspective.

I see what you mean about a "larger vision" and from what I have seen coming from Jive (recent content, popular content, etc.) and really like the extra depth that you have created by incorporating popularity rankings, weights and different factors into how you deliver appropriate and benefitial content to the end users (How Popularity Works in Clearspace). However, I think that by implementing Sticky Posts and other more "traditional" forum functionality you aren't going to undermine the work that you have done in this area. You will only give your customers more choices for how they want Clearspace to work for them.

Sometimes simpler is better though, and you just want a way to lock posts to the top regardless of how unpopular (policies, procedures, discussion rules) they may be. Without a way to just pin a topic it will still fall into the populairty algorithim, slowly sinking to the bottom of the list as days go on.

Thank you again for taking the time to read over this discussion. I sure everyone here is relieved to see that our collaborative voices have been heard. Hopefully it won't blow the roadmap out of the water, sticky threads should be a defacto piece of any type of online discussion/message board or forum.

Wow, thank you for the great dialogue. I'd like to add my apology to Chris's for missing the thread. I also see several other recent ideas that no one has responded to and we'll be getting back to those quickly.

Right now Sticky Threads are not on the list for 3.5 (the next release of Jive SBS), but we're exploring other options, outside of that release, to see if this is something we could get in. We'll post back here with the results of the exploration. The request ID for Sticky Threads is CS-6585.

We've evaluated several avenues for getting this done in the short-term and so far have not been able to commit to the functionality for a particular release. However, there is actually some code laid down by a very helpful and ambitious Jiver that, when it is ready, will provide sticky threads. So, while it isn't slotted for a specific release yet, it is being worked on.

Great news! Thanks to the above-and-beyond efforts of Will French, sticky threads, in the form of Feature Discussions, will be available in the next major release. Thanks again for all of your input on this feature!

Just got off the 4.0 demo call. The person presenting didn't realize that the Feature Discussion widget is the "stickies" implementation. From the widget edit screen he showed it didn't look like you could choose a question/discussion to feature

I've been demoing this feature quite often for my users as we start our upgrade process, and from what I can tell it shows Document, Discussions (and questions), and Blog Posts just fine. Not sure what you might have seen? Jive, any thoughts?

Although I do not work for the company anymore that needed the feature, what you really need is not just sticky documents but a sticky container that can hold advertising, a document, a discussion, an announcement, etc. Not just on a regular list but also on result sets (search, tag cloud, etc).

Example,if someone searches for product feature ABC, a "sticky" might show the training near by or a best practice or a special offer or a job posting or....

The way I solved some of the use cases is to tag it in such a way that the widget showing a subset (i.e. ABC) of content always has a widget above it with a result set like "ABC_Featured" or a HTML Widget to hard-coded link to the content but you obviously want all that dynamic and rules based (i.e. if search or tag = ABC, display ABC_featured, then ABC).

Ryan is correct, the Featured Content widget allows you to feature most of the content types in the system including Documents, Discussions, Blog Posts, and Videos. I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the person on the webinar, this functionality is not limited to Discussions.

Greg, it appeared to me that this is not a sticky function but another widget. If that's so, it doesn't really meet my needs, unless there have been other, bigger changes to 4.0.

If you can still only customize the Overview tab, the new widget is only a little different from what's already available. I don't want to clutter up that page with more widgets -- real estate is tight there already. Plus, the notices and items there quickly become wall paper to our visitors.

More importantly, this doesn't allow me to keep things at the top on the Discussions tab, where I really need it. (Unless you now allow customization of the Discussion tab. If that is the case, I can see this working.) As I'm sure you know, a sticky allows you to always present the information you want at the top of the list of discussions, where most forum users tend to go.

We've been waiting for several months for stickies. Now I think we're looking at redesigning our overview pages to somehow try to get owners' attention through widgets.

Featured Content includes an action on the specific content (to mark and unmark it as featured), a widget that you can place on an overview tab, and a section of each content tab, above the content list, that shows up whenever any of that content type is selected. For example, here is a screen shot with discussions, and it looks very similar for Documents, Blog Posts, and Videos:

Does that help clarify the functionality available with Featured Content? And, do you have the same concerns given this information?

Yes clears it up a bit. Does this widget exist for the overview tab as well? Google Analytics shows that our users don't really use the Discussions or All Content tab either as we are mostly discussion driven. They spend more time on the Overview Tab as in 3.0.X that is where we have control to customize.

The "Feature Content" Widget is only one way the "feature content" information is displayed. If you visit the Discussion, Document, and Blog tabs respectively, you will see references to featured content of that respective content-type at the top. If there is no feature content, you will NOT see this box. It is located at the top, just below the tab-bar. Unless I am misunderstanding, this seems to meet your needs. I'm not a Jive employee, but am very pleased with this feature as it was developed. So just trying to make sure the information gets out there as soon as possible. Here is a screen shot from a documents example. Imagine the same thing with the Discussions tabs.

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